Overture (from French ouverture , lit. "opening") is a music instrumental introduction to a ballet , opera , or oratorio in the 17th century. During the early Romantic era , composers such as Beethoven and Mendelssohn composed overtures which were independent, self-existing, instrumental, programmatic works that foreshadowed genres such as the symphonic poem . These were "at first undoubtedly intended to be played at the head of a programme".
179-420: The idea of an instrumental opening to opera existed during the 17th century. Peri 's Euridice opens with a brief instrumental ritornello , and Monteverdi 's L'Orfeo (1607) opens with a toccata , in this case a fanfare for muted trumpets . More important was the prologue, consisting of sung dialogue between allegorical characters which introduced the overarching themes of the stories depicted. As
358-460: A musical form , the French overture first appears in the court ballet and operatic overtures of Jean-Baptiste Lully , which he elaborated from a similar, two-section form called ouverture , found in the French ballets de cour as early as 1640. This French overture consists of a slow introduction in a marked "dotted rhythm" (i.e., exaggerated iambic , if the first chord is disregarded), followed by
537-668: A Berlin court on 18 July 1870. Richard and Cosima's wedding took place on 25 August 1870. On Christmas Day of that year, Wagner arranged a surprise performance (its premiere) of the Siegfried Idyll for Cosima's birthday. The marriage to Cosima lasted to the end of Wagner's life. Wagner, settled into his new-found domesticity, turned his energies towards completing the Ring cycle. He had not abandoned polemics: he republished his 1850 pamphlet "Judaism in Music", originally issued under
716-605: A Monastery , and War and Peace ; as well as Dmitri Shostakovich in The Nose and Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District , Edison Denisov in L'écume des jours , and Alfred Schnittke in Life with an Idiot and Historia von D. Johann Fausten . Czech composers also developed a thriving national opera movement of their own in the 19th century, starting with Bedřich Smetana , who wrote eight operas including
895-573: A cello; or accompagnato (also known as strumentato ) in which the orchestra provided accompaniment. Over the 18th century, arias were increasingly accompanied by the orchestra. By the 19th century, accompagnato had gained the upper hand, the orchestra played a much bigger role, and Wagner revolutionized opera by abolishing almost all distinction between aria and recitative in his quest for what Wagner termed "endless melody". Subsequent composers have tended to follow Wagner 's example, though some, such as Stravinsky in his The Rake's Progress have bucked
1074-506: A complex web of leitmotifs , recurring themes often associated with the characters and concepts of the drama, of which prototypes can be heard in his earlier operas such as Der fliegende Holländer , Tannhäuser and Lohengrin ; and he was prepared to violate accepted musical conventions, such as tonality , in his quest for greater expressivity. In his mature music dramas, Tristan und Isolde , Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg , Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal , he abolished
1253-422: A concern for expressive recitative which matched the contours of the French language. In the 18th century, Lully's most important successor was Jean-Philippe Rameau , who composed five tragédies en musique as well as numerous works in other genres such as opéra-ballet , all notable for their rich orchestration and harmonic daring. Despite the popularity of Italian opera seria throughout much of Europe during
1432-635: A connection with the traditional form is Dmitri Shostakovich 's Festive Overture , Op. 96 (1954), which is in two linked sections, "Allegretto" and "Presto" (Temperley 2001). Malcolm Arnold 's A Grand, Grand Overture , Op. 57 (1956), is a 20th-century parody of the late 19th century concert overture, scored for an enormous orchestra with organ, additional brass instruments , and obbligato parts for four rifles , three Hoover vacuum cleaners (two uprights in B ♭ , one horizontal with detachable sucker in C), and an electric floor polisher in E ♭ ; it
1611-517: A daughter, named Isolde , a child not of Bülow but of Wagner. Cosima was 24 years younger than Wagner and was herself illegitimate, the daughter of the Countess Marie d'Agoult , who had left her husband for Franz Liszt . Liszt initially disapproved of his daughter's involvement with Wagner, though nevertheless the two men were friends. The indiscreet affair scandalised Munich, and Wagner also fell into disfavour with many leading members of
1790-566: A distance, [was] a menace to his peace of mind." Wagner continued his correspondence with Mathilde and his friendship with her husband Otto, who maintained his financial support of the composer. In an 1859 letter to Mathilde, Wagner wrote, half-satirically, of Tristan : "Child! This Tristan is turning into something terrible . This final act!!!—I fear the opera will be banned ... only mediocre performances can save me! Perfectly good ones will be bound to drive people mad." In November 1859, Wagner once again moved to Paris to oversee production of
1969-523: A head in 1849, when the unsuccessful May Uprising in Dresden broke out, in which Wagner played a minor supporting role . Warrants were issued for the revolutionaries' arrest. Wagner had to flee, first visiting Paris and then settling in Zürich where he at first took refuge with a friend, Alexander Müller . Wagner was to spend the next twelve years in exile from Germany. He had completed Lohengrin ,
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#17327732980272148-589: A hearing. Berlioz's epic masterpiece Les Troyens , the culmination of the Gluckian tradition, was not given a full performance for almost a hundred years. In the second half of the 19th century, Jacques Offenbach created operetta with witty and cynical works such as Orphée aux enfers , as well as the opera Les Contes d'Hoffmann ; Charles Gounod scored a massive success with Faust ; and Georges Bizet composed Carmen , which, once audiences learned to accept its blend of Romanticism and realism, became
2327-499: A highly varied body of operatic works, often with libretti by the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal . Other composers who made individual contributions to German opera in the early 20th century include Alexander von Zemlinsky , Erich Korngold , Franz Schreker , Paul Hindemith , Kurt Weill and the Italian-born Ferruccio Busoni . The operatic innovations of Arnold Schoenberg and his successors are discussed in
2506-458: A large variety of works for stage. Perhaps, the most famous Iranian opera is Rostam and Sohrab by Loris Tjeknavorian premiered not until the early 2000s. Chinese contemporary classical opera , a Chinese language form of Western style opera that is distinct from traditional Chinese opera , has had operas dating back to The White-Haired Girl in 1945. In Latin America, opera started as
2685-425: A lengthy Prelude (Vorspiel).... At a specially-appointed Festival, I propose, some future time, to produce those three Dramas with their Prelude, in the course of three days and a fore-evening [emphasis in original]. Wagner began composing the music for Das Rheingold between November 1853 and September 1854, following it immediately with Die Walküre (written between June 1854 and March 1856). He began work on
2864-481: A letter to Mathilde from him. After the resulting confrontation with Minna, Wagner left Zürich alone, bound for Venice , where he rented an apartment in the Palazzo Giustinian , while Minna returned to Germany. Wagner's attitude to Minna had changed; the editor of his correspondence with her, John Burk, has said that she was to him "an invalid, to be treated with kindness and consideration, but, except at
3043-641: A lively movement in fugato style. The overture is frequently followed by a series of dance tunes before the curtain rises, and often returns following the Prologue to introduce the action proper. This ouverture style was also used in English opera, most notably Henry Purcell 's Dido and Æneas . Its distinctive rhythmic profile and function thus led to the French overture style found in the works of late Baroque composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach , Georg Friedrich Händel , and Georg Philipp Telemann . The style
3222-515: A new phrase. This fashion of opera directed opera from Verdi, onward, exercising tremendous influence on his successors Giacomo Puccini , Richard Strauss , and Benjamin Britten . After Verdi, the sentimental "realistic" melodrama of verismo appeared in Italy. This was a style introduced by Pietro Mascagni 's Cavalleria rusticana and Ruggero Leoncavallo 's Pagliacci that came to dominate
3401-748: A new revision of Tannhäuser , staged thanks to the efforts of Princess Pauline von Metternich , whose husband was the Austrian ambassador in Paris. The performances of the Paris Tannhäuser in 1861 were a notable fiasco . This was partly a consequence of the conservative tastes of the Jockey Club , which organised demonstrations in the theatre to protest at the presentation of the ballet feature in Act ;1 (instead of its traditional location in
3580-528: A new seriousness to the genre, which had never been wholly "comic" in any case. Another phenomenon of this period was the 'propaganda opera' celebrating revolutionary successes, e.g. Gossec's Le triomphe de la République (1793). By the 1820s, Gluckian influence in France had given way to a taste for Italian bel canto , especially after the arrival of Rossini in Paris . Rossini's Guillaume Tell helped found
3759-483: A nineteenth-century peak of Polish national opera . In the 20th century, other operas created by Polish composers included King Roger by Karol Szymanowski and Ubu Rex by Krzysztof Penderecki . The first known opera from Turkey (the Ottoman Empire ) was Arshak II , which was an Armenian opera composed by an ethnic Armenian composer Tigran Chukhajian in 1868 and partially performed in 1873. It
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#17327732980273938-432: A pastoral opera based on Goethe 's Die Laune des Verliebten ( The Infatuated Lover's Caprice ), written at the age of 17, Die Hochzeit ( The Wedding ), on which Wagner worked in 1832, and the singspiel Männerlist größer als Frauenlist ( Men are More Cunning than Women , 1837–1838). Die Feen ( The Fairies , 1833) was not performed in the composer's lifetime, and Das Liebesverbot ( The Ban on Love , 1836)
4117-542: A piano transcription of the 9th Symphony. He was also greatly impressed by a performance of Mozart 's Requiem . Wagner's early piano sonatas and his first attempts at orchestral overtures date from this period. In 1829 he saw a performance by dramatic soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient , who became his ideal of the fusion of drama and music in opera. In Mein Leben Wagner wrote, "When I look back across my entire life I find no event to place beside this in
4296-453: A pseudonym, under his own name in 1869, extending the introduction and adding a lengthy final section. The publication led to several public protests at early performances of Die Meistersinger in Vienna and Mannheim. In 1871, Wagner decided to move to Bayreuth , which was to be the location of his new opera house. The town council donated a large plot of land—the "Green Hill"—as a site for
4475-655: A reconciliation with Minna during this Paris visit, and although she joined him there, the reunion was not successful and they again parted from each other when Wagner left. The political ban that had been placed on Wagner in the North German Confederation after he had fled Dresden was fully lifted in 1862. The composer settled in Biebrich , on the Rhine near Wiesbaden in Hesse . Here Minna visited him for
4654-775: A result of European colonisation. The first opera ever written in the Americas was 1701's La púrpura de la rosa , by Tomás de Torrejón y Velasco , a Peruvian composer born in Spain; a decade later, 1711's Partenope , by the Mexican Manuel de Zumaya , was the first opera written from a composer born in Latin America (music now lost). The first Brazilian opera for a libretto in Portuguese was A Noite de São João , by Elias Álvares Lobo . However, Antônio Carlos Gomes
4833-573: A scant living by writing articles and short novelettes such as A pilgrimage to Beethoven , which sketched his growing concept of "music drama", and An end in Paris , where he depicts his own miseries as a German musician in the French metropolis. He also provided arrangements of operas by other composers, largely on behalf of the Schlesinger publishing house. During this stay he completed his third and fourth operas Rienzi and Der fliegende Holländer . Wagner had completed Rienzi in 1840. With
5012-522: A separate French tradition was founded by the Italian-born French composer Jean-Baptiste Lully at the court of King Louis XIV . Despite his foreign birthplace, Lully established an Academy of Music and monopolised French opera from 1672. Starting with Cadmus et Hermione , Lully and his librettist Quinault created tragédie en musique , a form in which dance music and choral writing were particularly prominent. Lully's operas also show
5191-415: A small pension which she maintained until 1859. With help from her friend Jessie Laussot, this was to have been augmented to an annual sum of 3,000 thalers per year, but the plan was abandoned when Wagner began an affair with Mme. Laussot. Wagner even plotted an elopement with her in 1850, which her husband prevented. Meanwhile, Wagner's wife Minna, who had disliked the operas he had written after Rienzi ,
5370-734: A speech-inflected style, and self-contained arias . The 19th century saw the rise of the continuous music drama . Opera originated in Italy at the end of the 16th century (with Jacopo Peri 's mostly lost Dafne , produced in Florence in 1598) especially from works by Claudio Monteverdi , notably L'Orfeo , and soon spread through the rest of Europe: Heinrich Schütz in Germany, Jean-Baptiste Lully in France, and Henry Purcell in England all helped to establish their national traditions in
5549-469: A superb sense of drama, harmony, melody, and counterpoint to write a series of comic operas with libretti by Lorenzo Da Ponte , notably Le nozze di Figaro , Don Giovanni , and Così fan tutte , which remain among the most-loved, popular and well-known operas. But Mozart's contribution to opera seria was more mixed; by his time it was dying away, and in spite of such fine works as Idomeneo and La clemenza di Tito , he would not succeed in bringing
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5728-486: Is German?" (1878, but based on a draft written in the 1860s), repeated Wagner's antisemitic preoccupations. Wagner completed Parsifal in January 1882, and a second Bayreuth Festival was held for the new opera, which premiered on 26 May. Wagner was by this time extremely ill, having suffered a series of increasingly severe angina attacks. During the sixteenth and final performance of Parsifal on 29 August, he entered
5907-566: Is a form of Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers . Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librettist and incorporates a number of the performing arts , such as acting , scenery , costume , and sometimes dance or ballet . The performance is typically given in an opera house , accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble , which since
6086-569: Is dedicated "to President Hoover ". One song of the Who 's rock opera Tommy is designated as "Underture". In motion pictures , an overture is a piece of music setting the mood for the film before the opening credits start. Famous examples include Gone with the Wind (1939) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962). For a comprehensive list, see the list of films with overtures . Some well-known or commonly played overtures: Opera Opera
6265-622: Is generally regarded as the most outstanding Brazilian composer, having a relative success in Italy with its Brazilian-themed operas with Italian librettos, such as Il Guarany . Opera in Argentina developed in the 20th century after the inauguration of Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires—with the opera Aurora , by Ettore Panizza , being heavily influenced by the Italian tradition, due to immigration. Other important composers from Argentina include Felipe Boero and Alberto Ginastera . Perhaps
6444-629: Is most famous for his Italian comic operas , especially The Marriage of Figaro ( Le nozze di Figaro ), Don Giovanni , and Così fan tutte , as well as Die Entführung aus dem Serail ( The Abduction from the Seraglio ), and The Magic Flute ( Die Zauberflöte ), landmarks in the German tradition. The first third of the 19th century saw the high point of the bel canto style, with Gioachino Rossini , Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini all creating signature works of that style. It also saw
6623-412: Is most often used in preludes to suites , and can be found in non-staged vocal works such as cantatas , for example in the opening chorus of Bach's cantata Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, BWV 61 . Handel also uses the French overture form in some of his Italian operas, such as Giulio Cesare . In Italy, a distinct form called "overture" arose in the 1680s, became established particularly through
6802-487: Is the first opera score to have survived until the present day. However, the honour of being the first opera still to be regularly performed goes to Claudio Monteverdi 's L'Orfeo , composed for the court of Mantua in 1607. The Mantua court of the Gonzagas , employers of Monteverdi, played a significant role in the origin of opera employing not only court singers of the concerto delle donne (till 1598), but also one of
6981-830: Is the shift away from long, suspended melodies, to short quick mottos, as first illustrated by Giuseppe Verdi in his Falstaff . Composers such as Strauss, Britten, Shostakovich and Stravinsky adopted and expanded upon this style. Operatic modernism truly began in the operas of two Viennese composers, Arnold Schoenberg and his student Alban Berg , both composers and advocates of atonality and its later development (as worked out by Schoenberg), dodecaphony . Schoenberg's early musico-dramatic works, Erwartung (1909, premiered in 1924) and Die glückliche Hand display heavy use of chromatic harmony and dissonance in general. Schoenberg also occasionally used Sprechstimme . The two operas of Schoenberg's pupil Alban Berg, Wozzeck (1925) and Lulu (incomplete at his death in 1935) share many of
7160-482: The Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. The drama was to be presented as a continuously sung narrative, without conventional operatic structures like arias and recitatives . He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in
7339-484: The Centennial March for America, for which he received $ 5,000. Following the first Bayreuth Festival, Wagner began work on Parsifal , his final opera. The composition took four years, much of which Wagner spent in Italy for health reasons. From 1876 to 1878 Wagner also embarked on the last of his documented emotional liaisons, this time with Judith Gautier , whom he had met at the 1876 Festival. Wagner
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7518-530: The English Restoration , foreign (especially French) musicians were welcomed back. In 1673, Thomas Shadwell 's Psyche , patterned on the 1671 'comédie-ballet' of the same name produced by Molière and Jean-Baptiste Lully . William Davenant produced The Tempest in the same year, which was the first musical adaption of a Shakespeare play (composed by Locke and Johnson). About 1683, John Blow composed Venus and Adonis , often thought of as
7697-599: The National Theatre Munich on 10 June 1865, the first Wagner opera premiere in almost 15 years. (The premiere had been scheduled for 15 May, but was delayed by bailiffs acting for Wagner's creditors, and also because the Isolde, Malvina Schnorr von Carolsfeld , was hoarse and needed time to recover.) The conductor of this premiere was Hans von Bülow , whose wife, Cosima , had given birth in April that year to
7876-471: The Philharmonic Society of London , including one before Queen Victoria . The Queen enjoyed his Tannhäuser overture and spoke with Wagner after the concert, writing in her diary that Wagner was "short, very quiet, wears spectacles & has a very finely-developed forehead, a hooked nose & projecting chin." Wagner's uneasy affair with Mathilde collapsed in 1858, when Minna intercepted
8055-514: The Ring cycle (which was not resumed for the next twelve years) and begin work on Tristan . While planning the opera, Wagner composed the Wesendonck Lieder , five songs for voice and piano, setting poems by Mathilde. Two of these settings are explicitly subtitled by Wagner as "studies for Tristan und Isolde ". Among the conducting engagements that Wagner undertook for revenue during this period, he gave several concerts in 1855 with
8234-568: The Ring , and the other operas Wagner planned. Wagner also began to dictate his autobiography, Mein Leben , at the King's request. Wagner noted that his rescue by Ludwig coincided with news of the death of his earlier mentor (but later supposed enemy) Giacomo Meyerbeer , and regretted that "this operatic master, who had done me so much harm, should not have lived to see this day." After grave difficulties in rehearsal, Tristan und Isolde premiered at
8413-530: The Romantic era . Carl Maria von Weber wrote two concert overtures, Der Beherrscher der Geister ('The Ruler of the Spirits', 1811, a revision of the overture to his unfinished opera Rübezahl of 1805), and Jubel-Ouvertüre ('Jubilee Overture', 1818, incorporating God Save the King at its climax). However, the overture A Midsummer Night's Dream (1826) by Felix Mendelssohn is generally regarded as
8592-599: The Sinfonietta and the Glagolitic Mass . Spain also produced its own distinctive form of opera, known as zarzuela , which had two separate flowerings: one from the mid-17th century through the mid-18th century, and another beginning around 1850. During the late 18th century up until the mid-19th century, Italian opera was immensely popular in Spain, supplanting the native form . In Russian Eastern Europe, several national operas began to emerge. Ukrainian opera
8771-577: The dramatist Sir William Davenant produced The Siege of Rhodes . Since his theatre was not licensed to produce drama, he asked several of the leading composers ( Lawes , Cooke , Locke , Coleman and Hudson ) to set sections of it to music. This success was followed by The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru (1658) and The History of Sir Francis Drake (1659). These pieces were encouraged by Oliver Cromwell because they were critical of Spain. With
8950-462: The libretto (meaning "small book"). Some composers, notably Wagner, have written their own libretti; others have worked in close collaboration with their librettists, e.g. Mozart with Lorenzo Da Ponte . Traditional opera, often referred to as " number opera ", consists of two modes of singing: recitative , the plot-driving passages sung in a style designed to imitate and emphasize the inflections of speech, and aria (an "air" or formal song) in which
9129-471: The 1640s. His most important follower Francesco Cavalli helped spread opera throughout Italy. In these early Baroque operas, broad comedy was blended with tragic elements in a mix that jarred some educated sensibilities, sparking the first of opera's many reform movements, sponsored by the Arcadian Academy , which came to be associated with the poet Metastasio , whose libretti helped crystallize
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#17327732980279308-451: The 17th century. In the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe (except France), attracting foreign composers such as George Frideric Handel . Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera, until Christoph Willibald Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his "reform" operas in the 1760s. The most renowned figure of late 18th-century opera is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , who began with opera seria but
9487-643: The 1850s the concert overture began to be supplanted by the symphonic poem , a form devised by Franz Liszt in several works that began as dramatic overtures. The distinction between the two genres was the freedom to mould the musical form according to external programmatic requirements. The symphonic poem became the preferred form for the more "progressive" composers, such as César Franck , Camille Saint-Saëns , Richard Strauss , Alexander Scriabin , and Arnold Schoenberg , while more conservative composers like Anton Rubinstein , Tchaikovsky , Johannes Brahms , Robert Schumann and Arthur Sullivan remained faithful to
9666-557: The 18th century another genre was gaining popularity in France: opéra comique . This was the equivalent of the German singspiel , where arias alternated with spoken dialogue. Notable examples in this style were produced by Monsigny , Philidor and, above all, Grétry . During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period, composers such as Étienne Méhul , Luigi Cherubini and Gaspare Spontini , who were followers of Gluck, brought
9845-464: The 19th century in Russia, there were written such operatic masterpieces as Rusalka and The Stone Guest by Alexander Dargomyzhsky , Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina by Modest Mussorgsky , Prince Igor by Alexander Borodin , Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades by Pyotr Tchaikovsky , and The Snow Maiden and Sadko by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov . These developments mirrored
10024-562: The 20th century for his innovative works. His later, mature works incorporate his earlier studies of national folk music in a modern, highly original synthesis, first evident in the opera Jenůfa , which was premiered in 1904 in Brno . The success of Jenůfa (often called the " Moravian national opera") at Prague in 1916 gave Janáček access to the world's great opera stages. Janáček's later works are his most celebrated. They include operas such as Káťa Kabanová and The Cunning Little Vixen ,
10203-547: The 20th century, English opera began to assert more independence, with works of Ralph Vaughan Williams and in particular Benjamin Britten , who in a series of works that remain in standard repertory today, revealed an excellent flair for the dramatic and superb musicality. More recently Sir Harrison Birtwistle has emerged as one of Britain's most significant contemporary composers from his first opera Punch and Judy to his most recent critical success in The Minotaur . In
10382-582: The Baroque period, Italian opera never gained much of a foothold in France, where its own national operatic tradition was more popular instead. After Rameau's death, the Bohemian-Austrian composer Gluck was persuaded to produce six operas for the Parisian stage in the 1770s. They show the influence of Rameau, but simplified and with greater focus on the drama. At the same time, by the middle of
10561-586: The Beach ), Mark Adamo , John Corigliano ( The Ghosts of Versailles ), Robert Moran , John Adams ( Nixon in China ), André Previn and Jake Heggie . Many contemporary 21st century opera composers have emerged such as Missy Mazzoli , Kevin Puts , Tom Cipullo , Huang Ruo , David T. Little , Terence Blanchard , Jennifer Higdon , Tobias Picker , Michael Ching , Anthony Davis , and Ricky Ian Gordon . Opera
10740-718: The Czech national spirit, as were some of his choral works. By far the most successful of the operas is Rusalka which contains the well-known aria "Měsíčku na nebi hlubokém" ("Song to the Moon"); it is played on contemporary opera stages frequently outside the Czech Republic . This is attributable to their uneven invention and libretti, and perhaps also their staging requirements – The Jacobin , Armida , Vanda and Dimitrij need stages large enough to portray invading armies. Leoš Janáček gained international recognition in
10919-602: The Emperor Pedro II of Brazil , Anton Bruckner , Camille Saint-Saëns and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky . Wagner was far from satisfied with the Festival; Cosima recorded that months later his attitude towards the productions was "Never again, never again!" Moreover, the festival finished with a deficit of about 150,000 marks. The expenses of Bayreuth and of Wahnfried meant that Wagner still sought further sources of income by conducting or taking on commissions such as
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#173277329802711098-639: The French newspaper Le Figaro , which called the music "the dream of a lunatic". The disillusioned included Wagner's (then) friend Friedrich Nietzsche , who, having published his eulogistic essay "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth" before the festival as part of his Untimely Meditations , was bitterly disappointed by what he saw as Wagner's pandering to increasingly exclusivist German nationalism; his breach with Wagner began at this time. The festival firmly established Wagner as an artist of European, and indeed world, importance: attendees included Kaiser Wilhelm I ,
11277-608: The Leipzig church registers. She and her family moved to Geyer's residence in Dresden . Until he was fourteen, Wagner was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. He almost certainly thought that Geyer was his biological father. Geyer's love of the theatre came to be shared by his stepson, and Wagner took part in his performances. In his autobiography Mein Leben Wagner recalled once playing the part of an angel. In late 1820, Wagner
11456-771: The London stage from the mid-19th century into the 1870s. London's Daily Telegraph agreed, describing The Yeomen of the Guard as "a genuine English opera, forerunner of many others, let us hope, and possibly significant of an advance towards a national lyric stage". Sullivan produced a few light operas in the 1890s that were of a more serious nature than those in the G&;S series, including Haddon Hall and The Beauty Stone , but Ivanhoe (which ran for 155 consecutive performances, using alternating casts—a record until Broadway's La bohème ) survives as his only grand opera . In
11635-557: The Opera (1755) proved to be an inspiration for Christoph Willibald Gluck 's reforms. He advocated that opera seria had to return to basics and that all the various elements—music (both instrumental and vocal), ballet , and staging—must be subservient to the overriding drama. In 1765 Melchior Grimm published " Poème lyrique ", an influential article for the Encyclopédie on lyric and opera librettos . Several composers of
11814-551: The acts of stage plays, operas in the new comic genre of intermezzi , which developed largely in Naples in the 1710s and 1720s, were initially staged during the intermissions of opera seria. They became so popular, however, that they were soon being offered as separate productions. Opera seria was elevated in tone and highly stylised in form, usually consisting of secco recitative interspersed with long da capo arias. These afforded great opportunity for virtuosic singing and during
11993-485: The advent of grand opera typified by the works of Daniel Auber and Giacomo Meyerbeer as well as Carl Maria von Weber 's introduction of German Romantische Oper (German Romantic Opera). The mid-to-late 19th century was a golden age of opera, led and dominated by Giuseppe Verdi in Italy and Richard Wagner in Germany. The popularity of opera continued through the verismo era in Italy and contemporary French opera through to Giacomo Puccini and Richard Strauss in
12172-490: The architect Gottfried Semper . Wagner's involvement in left-wing politics abruptly ended his welcome in Dresden. Wagner was active among socialist German nationalists there, regularly receiving such guests as the conductor and radical editor August Röckel and the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin . He was also influenced by the ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Ludwig Feuerbach . Widespread discontent came to
12351-457: The art form back to life again. The bel canto opera movement flourished in the early 19th century and is exemplified by the operas of Rossini , Bellini , Donizetti , Pacini , Mercadante and many others. Literally "beautiful singing", bel canto opera derives from the Italian stylistic singing school of the same name. Bel canto lines are typically florid and intricate, requiring supreme agility and pitch control. Examples of famous operas in
12530-648: The arts throughout the 20th century; his influence spread beyond composition into conducting, philosophy, literature, the visual arts and theatre. Richard Wagner was born on 22 May 1813 to an ethnic German family in Leipzig , then part of the Confederation of the Rhine . His family lived at No 3, the Brühl ( The House of the Red and White Lions ) in Leipzig's Jewish quarter . He was baptised at St. Thomas Church . He
12709-411: The bel canto style include Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia and La Cenerentola , as well as Bellini's Norma , La sonnambula and I puritani and Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor , L'elisir d'amore and Don Pasquale . Following the bel canto era, a more direct, forceful style was rapidly popularized by Giuseppe Verdi , beginning with his biblical opera Nabucco . This opera, and
12888-459: The characters express their emotions in a more structured melodic style. Vocal duets, trios and other ensembles often occur, and choruses are used to comment on the action. In some forms of opera, such as singspiel , opéra comique , operetta , and semi-opera , the recitative is mostly replaced by spoken dialogue. Melodic or semi-melodic passages occurring in the midst of, or instead of, recitative, are also referred to as arioso . The terminology of
13067-410: The circle of opera fans. Since the invention of radio and television, operas were also performed on (and written for) these media. Beginning in 2006, a number of major opera houses began to present live high-definition video transmissions of their performances in cinemas all over the world. Since 2009, complete performances can be downloaded and are live streamed . The words of an opera are known as
13246-512: The concluding movement is dancelike, most often with rhythms of the gigue or minuet , and returns to the key of the opening section. As the form evolved, the first movement often incorporated fanfare-like elements and took on the pattern of so-called "sonatina form" ( sonata form without a development section), and the slow section became more extended and lyrical. Italian overtures were often detached from their operas and played as independent concert pieces. In this context, they became important in
13425-492: The couple had amassed such large debts that they fled Riga on the run from creditors. Debts plagued Wagner for most of his life. Initially the pair took a stormy sea passage to London, from which Wagner drew the inspiration for his opera Der fliegende Holländer ( The Flying Dutchman ), with a plot based on a sketch by Heinrich Heine . The Wagners settled in Paris in September 1839 and stayed there until 1842. Wagner made
13604-560: The court, who were suspicious of his influence on the King. In December 1865, Ludwig was finally forced to ask the composer to leave Munich. He apparently also toyed with the idea of abdicating to follow his hero into exile, but Wagner quickly dissuaded him. Ludwig installed Wagner at the Villa Tribschen , beside Switzerland's Lake Lucerne . Die Meistersinger was completed at Tribschen in 1867, and premiered in Munich on 21 June
13783-433: The development of classical music; his Tristan und Isolde is sometimes described as marking the start of modern music . As he matured, he softened his ideological stance against traditional operatic forms (ie. arias, ensembles and choruses ), reintroducing them into his last few stage works, including Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg ( The Mastersingers of Nuremberg ) and Parsifal . To properly present his vision of
13962-408: The distinction between aria and recitative in favour of a seamless flow of "endless melody". Wagner also brought a new philosophical dimension to opera in his works, which were usually based on stories from Germanic or Arthurian legend. Finally, Wagner built his own opera house at Bayreuth with part of the patronage from Ludwig II of Bavaria , exclusively dedicated to performing his own works in
14141-506: The drama is understated, enigmatic and completely un-Wagnerian. Other notable 20th-century names include Ravel , Dukas , Roussel , Honegger and Milhaud . Francis Poulenc is one of the very few post-war composers of any nationality whose operas (which include Dialogues des Carmélites ) have gained a foothold in the international repertory. Olivier Messiaen 's lengthy sacred drama Saint François d'Assise (1983) has also attracted widespread attention. In England, opera's antecedent
14320-558: The early 19th century has been led by a conductor . Although musical theatre is closely related to opera, the two are considered to be distinct from one another. Opera is a key part of Western classical music , and Italian tradition in particular. Originally understood as an entirely sung piece, in contrast to a play with songs, opera has come to include numerous genres , including some that include spoken dialogue such as Singspiel and Opéra comique . In traditional number opera , singers employ two styles of singing: recitative ,
14499-577: The early 20th century. During the 19th century, parallel operatic traditions emerged in central and eastern Europe, particularly in Russia and Bohemia . The 20th century saw many experiments with modern styles, such as atonality and serialism ( Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg ), neoclassicism ( Igor Stravinsky ), and minimalism ( Philip Glass and John Adams ). With the rise of recording technology , singers such as Enrico Caruso and Maria Callas became known to much wider audiences that went beyond
14678-484: The early history of the symphony . Prior to the 18th century, the symphony and the overture were almost interchangeable, with overtures being extracted from operas to serve as stand-alone instrumental works, and symphonies being tagged to the front of operas as overtures. With the reform of opera seria, the overture began to distinguish itself from the symphony, and composers began to link the content of overtures to their operas dramatically and emotionally. Elements from
14857-427: The emergence of the separate but closely related art of musical theatre in the late 19th century. Sullivan wrote only one grand opera, Ivanhoe (following the efforts of a number of young English composers beginning about 1876), but he claimed that even his light operas constituted part of a school of "English" opera, intended to supplant the French operettas (usually performed in bad translations) that had dominated
15036-485: The family home, " Wahnfried ", into which Wagner, with Cosima and the children, moved from their temporary accommodation on 18 April 1874. The theatre was completed in 1875, and the festival was scheduled for the following year. Commenting on the struggle to finish the building, Wagner remarked to Cosima: "Each stone is red with my blood and yours." For the design of the Festspielhaus, Wagner appropriated some of
15215-435: The festival was deferred. To raise funds for the construction, " Wagner societies " were formed in several cities, and Wagner began touring Germany conducting concerts. By the spring of 1873, only a third of the required funds had been raised; further pleas to Ludwig were initially ignored, but early in 1874, with the project on the verge of collapse, the King relented and provided a loan. The full building programme included
15394-529: The first actual "opera singers", Madama Europa . Opera did not remain confined to court audiences for long. In 1637, the idea of a "season" (often during the carnival ) of publicly attended operas supported by ticket sales emerged in Venice . Monteverdi had moved to the city from Mantua and composed his last operas, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and L'incoronazione di Poppea , for the Venetian theatre in
15573-442: The first concert overture. Mendelssohn's other contributions to this genre include his Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage overture (1828), his overture The Hebrides (1830; also known as Fingal's Cave ) and the overtures Die schöne Melusine ( The Fair Melusine , 1834) and Ruy Blas (1839). Other notable early concert overtures were written by Hector Berlioz (e.g., Les Francs juges (1826), and Le corsaire (1828)). In
15752-672: The first decade of the 21st century, the librettist of an early Birtwistle opera, Michael Nyman , has been focusing on composing operas, including Facing Goya , Man and Boy: Dada , and Love Counts . Today composers such as Thomas Adès continue to export English opera abroad. Also in the 20th century, American composers like George Gershwin ( Porgy and Bess ), Scott Joplin ( Treemonisha ), Leonard Bernstein ( Candide ), Gian Carlo Menotti , Douglas Moore , and Carlisle Floyd began to contribute English-language operas infused with touches of popular musical styles. They were followed by composers such as Philip Glass ( Einstein on
15931-479: The first evening of the complete Ring cycle; the 1876 Bayreuth Festival therefore saw the premiere of the complete cycle, performed as a sequence as the composer had intended. The 1876 Festival consisted of three full Ring cycles (under the baton of Hans Richter ). At the end, critical reactions ranged between that of the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg , who thought the work "divinely composed", and that of
16110-588: The first half of the 16-hour, four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen ( The Ring of the Nibelung , also known simply as The Ring ). Wagner's compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex textures , rich harmonies and orchestration , and the elaborate use of leitmotifs —musical phrases associated with individual characters, places, ideas, or plot elements. His advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres , greatly influenced
16289-461: The first true English-language opera. Blow's immediate successor was the better known Henry Purcell . Despite the success of his masterwork Dido and Aeneas (1689), in which the action is furthered by the use of Italian-style recitative, much of Purcell's best work was not involved in the composing of typical opera, but instead, he usually worked within the constraints of the semi-opera format, where isolated scenes and masques are contained within
16468-444: The following year. At Ludwig's insistence, "special previews" of the first two works of the Ring , Das Rheingold and Die Walküre , were performed at Munich in 1869 and 1870, but Wagner retained his dream, first expressed in "A Communication to My Friends", to present the first complete cycle at a special festival with a new, dedicated, opera house . Minna died of a heart attack on 25 January 1866 in Dresden. Wagner did not attend
16647-431: The form and style that would dominate opera throughout the twentieth century. Rather than long, suspended melodies, Falstaff contains many little motifs and mottos, that, rather than being expanded upon, are introduced and subsequently dropped, only to be brought up again later. These motifs never are expanded upon, and just as the audience expects a character to launch into a long melody, a new character speaks, introducing
16826-416: The funeral. Following Minna's death Cosima wrote to Hans von Bülow several times asking him to grant her a divorce, but Bülow refused to concede this. He consented only after she had two more children with Wagner: another daughter, named Eva, after the heroine of Meistersinger , and a son Siegfried , named after the hero of the Ring . The divorce was finally sanctioned, after delays in the legal process, by
17005-541: The genre of opera seria , which became the leading form of Italian opera until the end of the 18th century. Once the Metastasian ideal had been firmly established, comedy in Baroque-era opera was reserved for what came to be called opera buffa . Before such elements were forced out of opera seria, many libretti had featured a separately unfolding comic plot as sort of an "opera-within-an-opera". One reason for this
17184-452: The golden age of opera seria the singer really became the star. The role of the hero was usually written for the high-pitched male castrato voice, which was produced by castration of the singer before puberty , which prevented a boy's larynx from being transformed at puberty. Castrati such as Farinelli and Senesino , as well as female sopranos such as Faustina Bordoni , became in great demand throughout Europe as opera seria ruled
17363-410: The greatest French grand opera , Don Carlos , and ending his career with two Shakespeare-inspired works, Otello and Falstaff , which reveal how far Italian opera had grown in sophistication since the early 19th century. These final two works showed Verdi at his most masterfully orchestrated, and are both incredibly influential, and modern. In Falstaff , Verdi sets the pre-eminent standard for
17542-625: The growth of Russian nationalism across the artistic spectrum, as part of the more general Slavophilism movement. In the 20th century, the traditions of Russian opera were developed by many composers including Sergei Rachmaninoff in his works The Miserly Knight and Francesca da Rimini , Igor Stravinsky in Le Rossignol , Mavra , Oedipus rex , and The Rake's Progress , Sergei Prokofiev in The Gambler , The Love for Three Oranges , The Fiery Angel , Betrothal in
17721-428: The ideas of his former colleague, Gottfried Semper, which he had previously solicited for a proposed new opera house in Munich. Wagner was responsible for several theatrical innovations at Bayreuth; these include darkening the auditorium during performances, and placing the orchestra in a pit out of view of the audience. The Festspielhaus finally opened on 13 August 1876 with Das Rheingold , at last taking its place as
17900-524: The importance of the orchestra is equal to that of the singers. The orchestra's dramatic role in the later operas includes the use of leitmotifs , musical phrases that can be interpreted as announcing specific characters, locales, and plot elements; their complex interweaving and evolution illuminate the progression of the drama. These operas are still, despite Wagner's reservations, referred to by many writers as "music dramas". Wagner's earliest attempts at opera were often uncompleted. Abandoned works include
18079-778: The impression it produced on me," and claimed that the "profoundly human and ecstatic performance of this incomparable artist" kindled in him an "almost demonic fire". In 1831, Wagner enrolled at the Leipzig University , where he became a member of the Saxon student fraternity . He took composition lessons with the Thomaskantor Theodor Weinlig . Weinlig was so impressed with Wagner's musical ability that he refused any payment for his lessons. He arranged for his pupil's Piano Sonata in B-flat major (which
18258-452: The internationally popular The Bartered Bride . Smetana's eight operas created the bedrock of the Czech opera repertory, but of these only The Bartered Bride is performed regularly outside the composer's homeland. After reaching Vienna in 1892 and London in 1895 it rapidly became part of the repertory of every major opera company worldwide. Antonín Dvořák 's nine operas, except his first, have librettos in Czech and were intended to convey
18437-540: The journal Bayreuther Blätter , published by his supporter Hans von Wolzogen . Wagner's sudden interest in Christianity at this period, which infuses Parsifal , was contemporary with his increasing alignment with German nationalism , and required on his part, and the part of his associates, "the rewriting of some recent Wagnerian history", so as to represent, for example, the Ring as a work reflecting Christian ideals. Many of these later articles, including "What
18616-510: The last of his middle-period operas, before the Dresden uprising, and now wrote desperately to his friend Franz Liszt to have it staged in his absence. Liszt conducted the premiere in Weimar in August 1850. Nevertheless, Wagner was in grim personal straits, isolated from the German musical world and without any regular income. In 1850, Julie, the wife of his friend Karl Ritter, began to pay him
18795-477: The last time: they parted irrevocably, though Wagner continued to give financial support to her while she lived in Dresden until her death in 1866. In Biebrich, Wagner, at last, began work on Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg , his only mature comedy. Wagner wrote a first draft of the libretto in 1845, and he had resolved to develop it during a visit he had made to Venice with the Wesendoncks in 1860, where he
18974-526: The late 18th century. Nevertheless, native forms would develop in spite of this influence. In 1644, Sigmund Staden produced the first Singspiel , Seelewig , a popular form of German-language opera in which singing alternates with spoken dialogue. In the late 17th century and early 18th century, the Theater am Gänsemarkt in Hamburg presented German operas by Keiser , Telemann and Handel . Yet most of
19153-609: The leadership Zacharia Paliashvili , who fused local folk songs and stories with 19th-century Romantic classical themes. The key figure of Hungarian national opera in the 19th century was Ferenc Erkel , whose works mostly dealt with historical themes. Among his most often performed operas are Hunyadi László and Bánk bán . The most famous modern Hungarian opera is Béla Bartók 's Duke Bluebeard's Castle . Stanisław Moniuszko 's opera Straszny Dwór (in English The Haunted Manor ) (1861–64) represents
19332-438: The major German composers of the time, including Handel himself, as well as Graun , Hasse and later Gluck , chose to write most of their operas in foreign languages, especially Italian. In contrast to Italian opera, which was generally composed for the aristocratic class, German opera was generally composed for the masses and tended to feature simple folk-like melodies, and it was not until the arrival of Mozart that German opera
19511-531: The masses in order to achieve fame and financial success, rather than creating genuine works of art. In " Opera and Drama " (1851), Wagner described the aesthetics of music drama that he was using to create the Ring cycle. Before leaving Dresden, Wagner had drafted a scenario that eventually became Der Ring des Nibelungen . He initially wrote the libretto for a single opera, Siegfried's Tod ( Siegfried's Death ), in 1848. After arriving in Zürich, he expanded
19690-499: The most daring and revolutionary. In it, Verdi blurs the distinction between the aria and recitative as it never before was, leading the opera to be "an unending string of duets". La traviata was also novel. It tells the story of courtesan, and it includes elements of verismo or "realistic" opera, because rather than featuring great kings and figures from literature, it focuses on the tragedies of ordinary life and society. After these, he continued to develop his style, composing perhaps
19869-516: The most important event of his life. His personal circumstances certainly made him an easy convert to what he understood to be Schopenhauer's philosophy, sometimes categorised as " philosophical pessimism ". He remained an adherent of Schopenhauer for the rest of his life. One of Schopenhauer's doctrines was that music held a supreme role in the arts as a direct expression of the world's essence, namely, blind, impulsive will. This doctrine contradicted Wagner's view, expressed in "Opera and Drama", that
20048-542: The most obvious stylistic manifestation of modernism in opera is the development of atonality . The move away from traditional tonality in opera had begun with Richard Wagner , and in particular the Tristan chord . Composers such as Richard Strauss , Claude Debussy , Giacomo Puccini , Paul Hindemith , Benjamin Britten and Hans Pfitzner pushed Wagnerian harmony further with a more extreme use of chromaticism and greater use of dissonance. Another aspect of modernist opera
20227-414: The most popular of all opéra comiques. Jules Massenet , Camille Saint-Saëns and Léo Delibes all composed works which are still part of the standard repertory, examples being Massenet's Manon , Saint-Saëns' Samson et Dalila and Delibes' Lakmé . Their operas formed another genre, the opéra lyrique , combined opéra comique and grand opera. It is less grandiose than grand opera, but without
20406-417: The most significant figure was undoubtedly Wagner . Wagner was one of the most revolutionary and controversial composers in musical history. Starting under the influence of Weber and Meyerbeer , he gradually evolved a new concept of opera as a Gesamtkunstwerk (a "complete work of art"), a fusion of music, poetry and painting. He greatly increased the role and power of the orchestra, creating scores with
20585-418: The music in opera had to be subservient to the drama. Wagner scholars have argued that Schopenhauer's influence caused Wagner to assign a more commanding role to music in his later operas, including the latter half of the Ring cycle, which he had yet to compose. Aspects of Schopenhauerian doctrine found their way into Wagner's subsequent libretti. A second source of inspiration was Wagner's infatuation with
20764-458: The musical stage in England. The only exceptions were ballad operas , such as John Gay 's The Beggar's Opera (1728), musical burlesques , European operettas , and late Victorian era light operas , notably the Savoy operas of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan , all of which types of musical entertainments frequently spoofed operatic conventions; these genres contributed significantly to
20943-482: The new genre of grand opera , a form whose most famous exponent was another foreigner, Giacomo Meyerbeer . Meyerbeer's works, such as Les Huguenots , emphasised virtuoso singing and extraordinary stage effects. Lighter opéra comique also enjoyed tremendous success in the hands of Boïeldieu , Auber , Hérold and Adam . In this climate, the operas of the French-born composer Hector Berlioz struggled to gain
21122-586: The ones that would follow in Verdi's career, revolutionized Italian opera, changing it from merely a display of vocal fireworks, with Rossini's and Donizetti's works, to dramatic story-telling. Verdi's operas resonated with the growing spirit of Italian nationalism in the post- Napoleonic era, and he quickly became an icon of the patriotic movement for a unified Italy. In the early 1850s, Verdi produced his three most popular operas: Rigoletto , Il trovatore and La traviata . The first of these, Rigoletto , proved
21301-419: The opera are foreshadowed in the overture, following the reform ideology that the music and every other element on stages serves to enhance the plot. One such overture was that of La Magnifique by André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry, in which several of the arias are quoted. This " medley form" persists in the overtures to many works of musical theatre written in the 20th and 21st centuries. In 19th-century opera
21480-478: The operas he had previously written through Lohengrin. Partly in an attempt to explain his change of views, Wagner published in 1851 the autobiographical " A Communication to My Friends ". This included his first public announcement of what was to become the Ring cycle: I shall never write an Opera more. As I have no wish to invent an arbitrary title for my works, I will call them Dramas ... I propose to produce my myth in three complete dramas, preceded by
21659-404: The operas of Alessandro Scarlatti , and spread throughout Europe, supplanting the French form as the standard operatic overture by the mid-18th century. Its stereotypical form is in three generally homophonic movements : fast–slow–fast. The opening movement is normally in duple metre and a major key; the slow movement in earlier examples is usually quite short, and sometimes in a contrasting key;
21838-479: The operas of Mozart , who wrote in Vienna near the century's close. Leading Italian-born composers of opera seria include Alessandro Scarlatti , Antonio Vivaldi and Nicola Porpora . Opera seria had its weaknesses and critics. The taste for embellishment on behalf of the superbly trained singers, and the use of spectacle as a replacement for dramatic purity and unity drew attacks. Francesco Algarotti 's Essay on
22017-494: The other dominating force in English opera at this time was George Frideric Handel , whose opera serias filled the London operatic stages for decades and influenced most home-grown composers, like John Frederick Lampe , who wrote using Italian models. This situation continued throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, including in the work of Michael William Balfe , and the operas of the great Italian composers, as well as those of Mozart, Beethoven, and Meyerbeer, continued to dominate
22196-469: The overture, Vorspiel , Einleitung, Introduction, or whatever else it may be called, is generally nothing more definite than that portion of the music which takes place before the curtain rises. Richard Wagner 's Vorspiel to Lohengrin is a short self-contained movement founded on the music of the Grail. In Italian opera after about 1800, the "overture" became known as the sinfonia . Fisher also notes
22375-419: The overture. In the age when the symphonic poem had already become popular, Brahms wrote his Academic Festival Overture , Op. 80, as well as his Tragic Overture , Op. 81. An example clearly influenced by the symphonic poem is Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture . His equally well-known Romeo and Juliet is also labelled a 'fantasy-overture'. In European music after 1900, an example of an overture displaying
22554-572: The period, including Niccolò Jommelli and Tommaso Traetta , attempted to put these ideals into practice. The first to succeed however, was Gluck. Gluck strove to achieve a "beautiful simplicity". This is evident in his first reform opera, Orfeo ed Euridice , where his non-virtuosic vocal melodies are supported by simple harmonies and a richer orchestra presence throughout. Gluck's reforms have had resonance throughout operatic history. Weber, Mozart, and Wagner, in particular, were influenced by his ideals. Mozart, in many ways Gluck's successor, combined
22733-618: The pit unseen during act 3, took the baton from conductor Hermann Levi , and led the performance to its conclusion. After the festival, the Wagner family journeyed to Venice for the winter. Wagner died of a heart attack at the age of 69 on 13 February 1883 at Ca' Vendramin Calergi , a 16th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal . The legend that the attack was prompted by an argument with Cosima over Wagner's supposedly amorous interest in
22912-565: The poet-writer Mathilde Wesendonck , the wife of the silk merchant Otto Wesendonck. Wagner met the Wesendoncks, who were both great admirers of his music, in Zürich in 1852. From May 1853 onwards Wesendonck made several loans to Wagner to finance his household expenses in Zürich, and in 1857 placed a cottage on his estate at Wagner's disposal, which became known as the Asyl ("asylum" or "place of rest"). During this period, Wagner's growing passion for his patron's wife inspired him to put aside work on
23091-511: The quintessential designer of these productions, and this style was to dominate the English stage for three centuries. These masques contained songs and dances. In Ben Jonson 's Lovers Made Men (1617), "the whole masque was sung after the Italian manner, stilo recitativo". The approach of the English Commonwealth closed theatres and halted any developments that may have led to the establishment of English opera. However, in 1656,
23270-742: The same characteristics as described above, though Berg combined his highly personal interpretation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique with melodic passages of a more traditionally tonal nature (quite Mahlerian in character) which perhaps partially explains why his operas have remained in standard repertory, despite their controversial music and plots. Schoenberg's theories have influenced (either directly or indirectly) significant numbers of opera composers ever since, even if they themselves did not compose using his techniques. Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( / ˈ v ɑː ɡ n ər / VAHG -nər ; German: [ˈʁɪçaʁt ˈvaːɡnɐ] ; 22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883)
23449-441: The second act); but the opportunity was also exploited by those who wanted to use the occasion as a veiled political protest against the pro-Austrian policies of Napoleon III . It was during this visit that Wagner met the French poet Charles Baudelaire , who wrote an appreciative brochure, " Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris ". The opera was withdrawn after the third performance and Wagner left Paris soon after. He had sought
23628-512: The section on modernism . During the late 19th century, the Austrian composer Johann Strauss II , an admirer of the French -language operettas composed by Jacques Offenbach , composed several German-language operettas, the most famous of which was Die Fledermaus . Nevertheless, rather than copying the style of Offenbach, the operettas of Strauss II had distinctly Viennese flavor to them. In rivalry with imported Italian opera productions,
23807-419: The sense "composition in which poetry, dance, and music are combined" in 1639; the first recorded English usage in this sense dates to 1648. Dafne by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today. It was written around 1597, largely under the inspiration of an elite circle of literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the " Camerata de' Bardi ". Significantly, Dafne
23986-744: The singer Carrie Pringle , who had been a Flower-maiden in Parsifal at Bayreuth, is without credible evidence. After a funerary gondola bore Wagner's remains over the Grand Canal, his body was taken to Germany where it was buried in the garden of the Villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth. Wagner's musical output is listed by the Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis (WWV) as comprising 113 works, including fragments and projects. The first complete scholarly edition of his musical works in print
24165-561: The spoken dialogue of opèra comique . At the same time, the influence of Richard Wagner was felt as a challenge to the French tradition. Many French critics angrily rejected Wagner's music dramas while many French composers closely imitated them with variable success. Perhaps the most interesting response came from Claude Debussy . As in Wagner's works, the orchestra plays a leading role in Debussy's unique opera Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) and there are no real arias, only recitative. But
24344-401: The stage in every country except France. Farinelli was one of the most famous singers of the 18th century. Italian opera set the Baroque standard. Italian libretti were the norm, even when a German composer like Handel found himself composing the likes of Rinaldo and Giulio Cesare for London audiences. Italian libretti remained dominant in the classical period as well, for example in
24523-423: The story with Der junge Siegfried ( Young Siegfried ), which explored the hero's background. He completed the text of the cycle by writing the libretti for Die Walküre ( The Valkyrie ) and Das Rheingold ( The Rhine Gold ) and revising the other libretti to conform to his new concept, completing them in 1852. The concept of opera expressed in "Opera and Drama" and in other essays effectively renounced all
24702-632: The strong support of Giacomo Meyerbeer , it was accepted for performance by the Dresden Court Theatre ( Hofoper ) in the Kingdom of Saxony , and in 1842 Wagner moved to Dresden. His relief at returning to Germany was recorded in his " Autobiographic Sketch " of 1842, where he wrote that, en route from Paris, "For the first time I saw the Rhine —with hot tears in my eyes, I, poor artist, swore eternal fidelity to my German fatherland." Rienzi
24881-525: The structure of a spoken play, such as Shakespeare in Purcell's The Fairy-Queen (1692) and Beaumont and Fletcher in The Prophetess (1690) and Bonduca (1696). The main characters of the play tend not to be involved in the musical scenes, which means that Purcell was rarely able to develop his characters through song. Despite these hindrances, his aim (and that of his collaborator John Dryden )
25060-593: The style he wanted. Opera would never be the same after Wagner and for many composers his legacy proved a heavy burden. On the other hand, Richard Strauss accepted Wagnerian ideas but took them in wholly new directions, along with incorporating the new form introduced by Verdi. He first won fame with the scandalous Salome and the dark tragedy Elektra , in which tonality was pushed to the limits. Then Strauss changed tack in his greatest success, Der Rosenkavalier , where Mozart and Viennese waltzes became as important an influence as Wagner. Strauss continued to produce
25239-412: The task of writing the libretto (the text and lyrics) to others, Wagner wrote his own libretti, which he referred to as "poems". From 1849 onwards, he urged a new concept of opera often referred to as "music drama" (although he later rejected this term), in which all musical, poetic and dramatic elements were to be fused together—the Gesamtkunstwerk . Wagner developed a compositional style in which
25418-554: The term Sinfonia avanti l'opera (literally, the "symphony before the opera") was "an early term for a sinfonia used to begin an opera, that is, as an overture as opposed to one serving to begin a later section of the work". Although by the end of the eighteenth century opera overtures were already beginning to be performed as separate items in the concert hall, the "concert overture", intended specifically as an individual concert piece without reference to stage performance and generally based on some literary theme, began to appear early in
25597-709: The theatre in Würzburg . In the same year, at the age of 20, Wagner composed his first complete opera, Die Feen ( The Fairies ). This work, which imitated the style of Weber, went unproduced until half a century later, when it was premiered in Munich shortly after the composer's death in 1883. Having returned to Leipzig in 1834, Wagner held a brief appointment as musical director at the opera house in Magdeburg during which he wrote Das Liebesverbot ( The Ban on Love ), based on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure . This
25776-586: The theatre. The two married in Tragheim Church on 24 November 1836. In May 1837, Minna left Wagner for another man, and this was only the first débâcle of a tempestuous marriage. In June 1837, Wagner moved to Riga (then in the Russian Empire ), where he became music director of the local opera; having in this capacity engaged Minna's sister Amalie (also a singer) for the theatre, he presently resumed relations with Minna during 1838. By 1839,
25955-475: The theatre. The Wagners moved to the town the following year, and the foundation stone for the Bayreuth Festspielhaus ("Festival Theatre") was laid. Wagner initially announced the first Bayreuth Festival, at which for the first time the Ring cycle was presented complete, for 1873, but since Ludwig had declined to finance the project, the start of building was delayed and the proposed date for
26134-613: The third Ring drama, which he now called simply Siegfried , probably in September 1856, but by June 1857 he had completed only the first two acts. He decided to put the work aside to concentrate on a new idea: Tristan und Isolde , based on the Arthurian love story Tristan and Iseult . One source of inspiration for Tristan und Isolde was the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer , notably his The World as Will and Representation , to which Wagner had been introduced in 1854 by his poet friend Georg Herwegh . Wagner later called this
26313-426: The throne of Bavaria at the age of 18. The young king, an ardent admirer of Wagner's operas, had the composer brought to Munich. The King, who was homosexual, expressed in his correspondence a passionate personal adoration for the composer, and Wagner in his responses had no scruples about feigning reciprocal feelings. Ludwig settled Wagner's considerable debts and proposed to stage Tristan , Die Meistersinger ,
26492-534: The trend. The changing role of the orchestra in opera is described in more detail below . The Italian word opera means "work", both in the sense of the labour done and the result produced. The Italian word derives from the Latin word opera , a singular noun meaning "work" and also the plural of the noun opus . According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the Italian word was first used in
26671-453: The various kinds of operatic voices is described in detail below . During both the Baroque and Classical periods , recitative could appear in two basic forms, each of which was accompanied by a different instrumental ensemble: secco (dry) recitative, sung with a free rhythm dictated by the accent of the words, accompanied only by basso continuo , which was usually a harpsichord and
26850-521: The works, Wagner had his own opera house built to his specifications: the Bayreuth Festspielhaus , which featured many innovative design elements intended to immerse the audience in the drama. The premieres of The Ring and Parsifal took place there, and his most important stage works are performed at the annual Bayreuth Festival . The early success of the festival was secured by the efforts of his wife, Cosima Wagner , and has since been maintained by their descendants , attracting audiences from around
27029-399: The world's opera stages with such popular works as Giacomo Puccini 's La bohème , Tosca , and Madama Butterfly . Later Italian composers, such as Berio and Nono , have experimented with modernism . The first German opera was Dafne , composed by Heinrich Schütz in 1627, but the music score has not survived. Italian opera held a great sway over German-speaking countries until
27208-452: The world. Wagner's unorthodox operas, essays, and personal dealings engendered considerable controversy during his lifetime, and continue to do so. Declared a "genius" by some and a "disease" by others, his music is widely performed, but his views on religion, politics, and social life are debated—most notably on the extent to which his antisemitism finds expression in his stage and prose works. The effect of his ideas can be traced in many of
27387-453: Was Tsefal i Prokris by the Italian composer Francesco Araja (1755). The development of Russian-language opera was supported by the Russian composers Vasily Pashkevich , Yevstigney Fomin and Alexey Verstovsky . However, the real birth of Russian opera came with Mikhail Glinka and his two great operas A Life for the Tsar (1836) and Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842). After him, during
27566-461: Was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, " music dramas "). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer , Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of
27745-428: Was able to match its Italian counterpart in musical sophistication. The theatre company of Abel Seyler pioneered serious German-language opera in the 1770s, marking a break with the previous simpler musical entertainment. Mozart 's Singspiele , Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782) and Die Zauberflöte (1791) were an important breakthrough in achieving international recognition for German opera. The tradition
27924-449: Was able to move beyond the Italian influences and create his own unique and distinctly English voice. His modernized ballad opera, Love in a Village (1762), began a vogue for pastiche opera that lasted well into the 19th century. Charles Burney wrote that Arne introduced "a light, airy, original, and pleasing melody, wholly different from that of Purcell or Handel, whom all English composers had either pillaged or imitated". Besides Arne,
28103-714: Was also much troubled by problems of financing Parsifal , and by the prospect of the work being performed by other theatres than Bayreuth. He was once again assisted by the liberality of King Ludwig, but was still forced by his personal financial situation in 1877 to sell the rights of several of his unpublished works (including the Siegfried Idyll ) to the publisher Schott . Wagner wrote several articles in his later years, often on political topics, and often reactionary in tone, repudiating some of his earlier, more liberal, views. These include "Religion and Art" (1880) and "Heroism and Christianity" (1881), which were printed in
28282-409: Was an attempt to attract members of the growing merchant class, newly wealthy, but still not as cultured as the nobility, to the public opera houses . These separate plots were almost immediately resurrected in a separately developing tradition that partly derived from the commedia dell'arte , a long-flourishing improvisatory stage tradition of Italy. Just as intermedi had once been performed in between
28461-539: Was an attempt to revive the classical Greek drama , part of the wider revival of antiquity characteristic of the Renaissance . The members of the Camerata considered that the "chorus" parts of Greek dramas were originally sung, and possibly even the entire text of all roles; opera was thus conceived as a way of "restoring" this situation. Dafne , however, is lost. A later work by Peri, Euridice , dating from 1600,
28640-714: Was brought to Russia in the 1730s by the Italian operatic troupes and soon it became an important part of entertainment for the Russian Imperial Court and aristocracy . Many foreign composers such as Baldassare Galuppi , Giovanni Paisiello , Giuseppe Sarti , and Domenico Cimarosa (as well as various others) were invited to Russia to compose new operas, mostly in the Italian language . Simultaneously some domestic musicians of Ukrainian origin like Maxim Berezovsky and Dmitry Bortniansky were sent abroad to learn to write operas. The first opera written in Russian
28819-627: Was commenced in 1970 under the aegis of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur of Mainz , and is presently under the editorship of Egon Voss . It will consist of 21 volumes (57 books) of music and 10 volumes (13 books) of relevant documents and texts. As at October 2017, three volumes remain to be published. The publisher is Schott Music . Wagner's operatic works are his primary artistic legacy. Unlike most opera composers, who generally left
28998-525: Was consequently dedicated to him) to be published as Wagner's Op. 1. A year later, Wagner composed his Symphony in C major , a Beethovenesque work performed in Prague in 1832 and at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1833. He then began to work on an opera, Die Hochzeit ( The Wedding ), which he never completed. In 1833, Wagner's brother Albert managed to obtain for him a position as choirmaster at
29177-539: Was determined to set it to music and persuaded his family to allow him music lessons. By 1827, the family had returned to Leipzig. Wagner's first lessons in harmony were taken during 1828–1831 with Christian Gottlieb Müller. In January 1828 he first heard Beethoven 's 7th Symphony and then, in March, the same composer's 9th Symphony , both at the Gewandhaus . Beethoven became a major inspiration, and Wagner wrote
29356-526: Was developed by Semen Hulak-Artemovsky (1813–1873) whose most famous work Zaporozhets za Dunayem (A Cossack Beyond the Danube) is regularly performed around the world. Other Ukrainian opera composers include Mykola Lysenko ( Taras Bulba and Natalka Poltavka ), Heorhiy Maiboroda , and Yuliy Meitus . At the turn of the century, a distinct national opera movement also began to emerge in Georgia under
29535-483: Was developed in the 19th century by Beethoven with his Fidelio (1805), inspired by the climate of the French Revolution . Carl Maria von Weber established German Romantic opera in opposition to the dominance of Italian bel canto . His Der Freischütz (1821) shows his genius for creating a supernatural atmosphere. Other opera composers of the time include Marschner , Schubert and Lortzing , but
29714-543: Was enrolled at Pastor Wetzel's school at Possendorf, near Dresden, where he received some piano instruction from his Latin teacher. He struggled to play a proper scale at the keyboard and preferred playing theatre overtures by ear . Following Geyer's death in 1821, Richard was sent to the Kreuzschule , the boarding school of the Dresdner Kreuzchor , at the expense of Geyer's brother. At the age of nine he
29893-567: Was falling into a deepening depression . Wagner fell victim to ill health, according to Ernest Newman "largely a matter of overwrought nerves", which made it difficult for him to continue writing. Wagner's primary published output during his first years in Zürich was a set of essays. In " The Artwork of the Future " (1849), he described a vision of opera as Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art), in which music, song, dance, poetry, visual arts and stagecraft were unified. " Judaism in Music " (1850)
30072-756: Was fully staged in 1945 in Armenia. The first years of the Soviet Union saw the emergence of new national operas, such as the Koroğlu (1937) by the Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyov . The first Kyrgyz opera, Ai-Churek , premiered in Moscow at the Bolshoi Theatre on 26 May 1939, during Kyrgyz Art Decade. It was composed by Vladimir Vlasov , Abdylas Maldybaev and Vladimir Fere . The libretto
30251-577: Was hugely impressed by the Gothic elements of Carl Maria von Weber 's opera Der Freischütz , which he saw Weber conduct. At this period Wagner entertained ambitions as a playwright. His first creative effort, listed in the Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis (the standard listing of Wagner's works) as WWV 1, was a tragedy called Leubald . Begun when he was in school in 1826, the play was strongly influenced by Shakespeare and Goethe . Wagner
30430-466: Was inspired by Titian 's painting The Assumption of the Virgin . Throughout this period (1861–1864) Wagner sought to have Tristan und Isolde produced in Vienna. Despite many rehearsals, the opera remained unperformed, and gained a reputation as being "impossible" to sing, which added to Wagner's financial problems. Wagner's fortunes took a dramatic upturn in 1864, when King Ludwig II succeeded to
30609-426: Was staged at Magdeburg in 1836 but closed before the second performance; this, together with the financial collapse of the theatre company employing him, left the composer in bankruptcy. Wagner had fallen for one of the leading ladies at Magdeburg, the actress Christine Wilhelmine "Minna" Planer , and after the disaster of Das Liebesverbot he followed her to Königsberg , where she helped him to get an engagement at
30788-508: Was staged to considerable acclaim on 20 October. Wagner lived in Dresden for the next six years, eventually being appointed the Royal Saxon Court Conductor. During this period, he staged there Der fliegende Holländer (2 January 1843) and Tannhäuser (19 October 1845), the first two of his three middle-period operas. Wagner also mixed with artistic circles in Dresden, including the composer Ferdinand Hiller and
30967-535: Was the 17th-century jig . This was an afterpiece that came at the end of a play. It was frequently libellous and scandalous and consisted in the main of dialogue set to music arranged from popular tunes. In this respect, jigs anticipate the ballad operas of the 18th century. At the same time, the French masque was gaining a firm hold at the English Court, with even more lavish splendour and highly realistic scenery than had been seen before. Inigo Jones became
31146-418: Was the first English composer to experiment with Italian-style all-sung comic opera, with his greatest success being Thomas and Sally in 1760. His opera Artaxerxes (1762) was the first attempt to set a full-blown opera seria in English and was a huge success, holding the stage until the 1830s. Although Arne imitated many elements of Italian opera, he was perhaps the only English composer at that time who
31325-498: Was the first of Wagner's writings to feature antisemitic views. In this polemic Wagner asserted—often with vulgar, abusive language—that Jews lived as "outsiders" amid European societies and were disconnected from the national spirit ( Volksgeist ) of these countries, thus capable of producing only shallow and artificial imitations of European art music, despite having achieved technical proficiency in its study. According to Wagner, Jews such as Meyerbeer commercialised music catered to
31504-434: Was the ninth child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, a clerk in the Leipzig police service, and his wife, Johanna Rosine (née Pätz), the daughter of a baker. Wagner's father Carl died of typhoid fever six months after Richard's birth. Afterwards, his mother Johanna lived with Carl's friend, the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer . In August 1814 Johanna and Geyer probably married, although no documentation of this has been found in
31683-415: Was to establish serious opera in England, but these hopes ended with Purcell's early death at the age of 36. Following Purcell, the popularity of opera in England dwindled for several decades. A revived interest in opera occurred in the 1730s which is largely attributed to Thomas Arne , both for his own compositions and for alerting Handel to the commercial possibilities of large-scale works in English. Arne
31862-520: Was withdrawn after its first performance. Rienzi (1842) was Wagner's first opera to be successfully staged. The compositional style of these early works was conventional—the relatively more sophisticated Rienzi showing the clear influence of Grand Opera à la Spontini and Meyerbeer—and did not exhibit the innovations that would mark Wagner's place in musical history. Later in life, Wagner said that he did not consider these works to be part of his oeuvre , and they have been performed only rarely in
32041-549: Was written by Joomart Bokonbaev, Jusup Turusbekov, and Kybanychbek Malikov. The opera is based on the Kyrgyz heroic epic Manas . In Iran, opera gained more attention after the introduction of Western classical music in the late 19th century. However, it took until mid 20th century for Iranian composers to start experiencing with the field, especially as the construction of the Roudaki Hall in 1967, made possible staging of
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